Lysander accompanied King Agesilaus (when the latter was going to his Asiatic command in 396 B.C.). His purpose was—ὅπως τὰς δεκαρχίας τὰς κατασταθείσας ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου ἐν ταῖς πόλεσιν, ἐκπεπτωκυίας δὲ διὰ τοὺς ἐφόρους, οἱ τὰς πατρίους πολιτείας παρήγγειλαν, πάλιν καταστήσειε μετ᾽ Ἀγησιλάου. It shows the careless construction of Xenophon’s Hellenica, or perhaps his reluctance to set forth the discreditable points of the Lacedæmonian rule, that this is the first mention which he makes (and that too, indirectly) of the dekarchies, nine years after they had been first set up by Lysander. The government of the Thirty at Athens would never have been overthrown if the oppressed Athenians had been obliged to rely on a tutelary interference of the Spartan ephors to help them in overthrowing it. My last volume has shown that this nefarious oligarchy came to its end by the unassisted efforts of Thrasybulus and the Athenian democrats themselves. It is true, indeed, that the arrogance and selfishness of Sparta and of Lysander had alienated the Thebans, Corinthians, Megarians, and other neighboring allies, and induced them to sympathize with the Athenian exiles against the atrocities of the Thirty,—but they never rendered any positive assistance of moment. The inordinate personal ambition of Lysander had also offended King Pausanias and the Spartan ephors, so that they too became indifferent to the Thirty, who were his creatures. But this merely deprived the Thirty of that foreign support which Lysander, had he still continued in the ascendent, would have extended to them in full measure. It was not the positive cause of their downfall. That crisis was brought about altogether by the energy of Thrasybulus and his companions, who manifested such force and determination as could not have been put down without an extraordinary display of Spartan military power; a display not entirely safe when the sympathies of the chief allies were with the other side,—and at any rate adverse to the inclinations of Pausanias. As it was with the Thirty at Athens, so it probably was also with the dekarchies in the dependent cities. The Spartan ephors took no steps to put them down; but where the resistance of the citizens was strenuous enough to overthrow them, no Spartan intervention came to prop them up, and the harmost perhaps received orders not to consider his authority as indissolubly linked with theirs. The native forces of each dependent city being thus left to find their own level, the decemvirs, once installed, would doubtless maintain themselves in a great number; while in other cases they would be overthrown,—or, perhaps, would contrive to perpetuate their dominion by compromise and alliance with other oligarchical sections. This confused and unsettled state of the dekarchies,—some still existing, others half-existing, others again defunct,—prevailed in 396 B.C., when Lysander accompanied Agesilaus into Asia, in the